Overview

There are 4 separate parts to the configuration of the Dimensional Shipping extension:

Enabling the extension and setting system wide settings

Setting up the Carriers and deciding additional carrier configuration

Creating shared boxes to be used amongst products

Configuring products

System Wide Configuration

Firstly navigate to System->Configuration->ShippingSettings and enable the extension and enter your serial key. You should see a tab like this:

There are various system wide options you can choose from. We suggest initially just leave as the default settings until you have played with the extension and understand it some more. The options you can select from are:

Option

Description

Enabled

Enable/disable extension

Serial Key

Serial, if blank then means invalid, and extension will not run. You should resolve this by checking your url and serial key.

Packing Algorithm

Can be either Exact Packing or Average Packing. Exact Packing is the only documented method currently. Average Packing should only be used if advised by WebShopApps

Ship every item separately

Specify if every single item is shipped separately

Use parent

When using bundled or configurable products if this switch is set to Yes then the dimensional setup of the configurable/bundle product will be used as opposed to the child simple products within it

Default item packing box

The default packing box to use for products that do not have a box assigned. Can be left blank. See Box Configuration for how to setup a boxes.

Round weight to next whole number

Will round any weight up to a whole number e.g. 10.2lbs will become 11lbs

Show packages in comment history

. By default (switch set to Yes) all packages sent to the carrier will be displayed under the comment history section of new orders. If you set this switch to No then no packages will be displayed in the comment history section. Please note, setting the switch to No will not remove packages from previous orders comment history, it will only remove packages from orders created after the switch has been set to No.

Carrier Setup

Currently the Dimensional Shipping extension supports UPS, Fedex, USPS out of the box. We also provide support against our Freight Based extensions such as UPS Freight and Fedex Freight but please contact us to ensure it will meet your specific needs.

If you do not have the correct Fedex Web Service account or UPS XML account setup then you will not see shipping rates. We highly recommend before doing any configuration you just enable the extension and your carriers and ensure you can get basic rates back. If you cannot then please switch on logging and look at the responses coming back from the carriers. The most common issue we see is with invalid credentials, or trying to use sandbox credentials in a live environment.

In addition to the standard settings UPS supports the following additional configuration:

Option

Description

Add Declared Value

If set to yes uses the total cart price and sends this to UPS when requesting rates, in order to get the insurance premium on top of the actual shipping rate

Split oversized items into multiple packages

If you have packages or a cart that is oversized then when this option is set to Yes it will split according to the max weight. So, for instance, 400lbs would be split to be 2*150lb and 1*100lb packages

Maximum individual weight support for splitting

The maximum weight supported when splitting a package. You could set a limit of say 500lb then if any individual package exceeded this it would not be split (and hence rates would not be shown). This option is useful if you have a Freight extension in place at a higher weight threshold than 150lbs

USPS supports the same options as UPS, though the declared value capability is not implemented within USPS yet as we understand. We have investigated this with clients and have had discussions with USPS and they have told us that sending in the declared value will not result in rates being returned including insurance costs. We have left the feature coded in as we hope USPS fully implement their API soon!

Fedex supports the above options plus adds the following:

Option

Description

Show Home Delivery as Ground

When set Home Delivery wil be shown as Ground on the frontend.

Allow Saturday Pickups

If set to No then no Saturday pickups are allowed. Allowing Saturday pickups will result in seeing higher rates for air shipping when Fedex determines a saturday pickup is possible. Default is No.

Box Configuration

Under Catalog->Manage Shipping Boxes (from main menu, NOT under System->Configuration) you can define all the boxes you want to use with your products.

For each box you can assign it's height, width, length, and packing weight. You can also set the maximum weight allowed per box and the maximum number of products allowed in the box. All these fields are optional, including dimensions.

The packing weight defines the additional weight of the box. So you could say any box packed also has a packing weight of 2lbs. This will add 2lbs to these boxes when getting rates from UPS, and hopefully give more representative rates.

You can also define USPS Flat Rate boxes under this menu. You should set the "USPS Box Type" to custom box when you're creating your own boxes, otherwise set to the relevant USPS box. This is explained in more detail under the USPS Flat Rate box section.

Product Configuration

So now we have setup our system wide configuration, configured our carriers, and created our boxes. We are now ready to set up our products, the final step before testing.

Think about your products and how you want to pack them. If you don't do this then this step will be hard to do. You have a few choices around how you configure your products

Shipping Separately

Under the Product listing Shipping tab you will see the option to ship a product separately. When set this product will ship in it's own package. A good example is a TV, you wouldnt really ship this with another item inside the box, so it works well. You can combine the Ship Separately option with any of the others below to add in dimensions, packing weights, or shipping in multiple boxes.

Splitting a Product into multiple boxes - Method 1

You have 2 mechanisms for splitting a product into multiple boxes. The first method is the easiest as you don't have to define the individual boxes themselves. You can go for specifying the item can be split into multiple boxes via the switch in the Shipping tab. This will then use the box details set for the product and if required split the item up. A good example is say a flat pack of furniture. This may come in many pieces and you know it can be broken down, but you don't really care how.

Splitting a Product into multiple boxes - Method 2

The second method is to explicitly define how products are split into multiple boxes. This method is mostly used by our customers when creating bundled products. They might be shipping say a weightlifting bench and know the individual packages that make it up.

To set this up click on the Multiple Shipping Boxes tab in the Product listing. You will see a layout as above. You can set here the dimensions, weight & declared value of each box.

You can specify the quantity that will be passed to the carrier for each box. So for instance you could say a case of wine has a quantity of 12.

Finally, if desired you can indicate the multiples of the box, in the number of boxes field. So in the example above it says for each of these items in the cart create 5 packages of dimensions 12x17x25 with a weight of 42lb each, a declared value of $23 and set the quantity to 3.

Declaring Individual Shipping Boxes

The last form of configuration is probably the one you will use the most. This configuration can be found under the Individual Shipping Boxes tab in the product listing.

Here you can define the boxes that an item can ship in, and create rules around when these boxes are used. It's possible to define more than one possible box, but bear in mind only one will be selected by the extension based on it's logic to determine the best one for the situation.

A box can be a shared box, that is using the Box dropdown and selecting one from there, or an individual unshared box that is only used by this product (set using the dimensions length, width, height).

You have the following configuration options:

Option

Description

Max Quantity Allowed in this Box

The maximum quantity you can have in each box. For example you could say max qty of 5, then if I say had 10 of these products in the cart it would ship in 2 boxes

Min Box valid From

The minimum quantity that must be in the cart before this box can be used. So if you set it to say 20 then if there were under 20 of these items then this box would not be used.

Max Qty valid To

The maximum quantity that must be in the cart before this box can be used. So if you set it to say 20 then if there were over 20 of these items then this box would not be used.

The extension is clever enough to work out the percentage of the box used by each item when dimensions are set. Using this information it is able to determine when a box is full, even if this box contains other items which may have different characteristics. See our examples section for more information on this.

USPS Flat Rate Box Configuration

The extension supports defining which type of USPS flat rate box each product ships in. This can be in addition to the individual or multiple shipping boxes you may have defined in the previous step.

When flat rate box rates will be returned

The extension will request a rate for USPS flat rate boxes when all products in the cart are assigned to a USPS flat rate box. If there's a product in the cart which isn't assigned to a flat rate box then rates will not be requested for flat rate boxes. Only standard USPS services will be returned.

What happens when products are assigned to different boxes

If products are assigned to different sized USPS flat rate boxes then the largest box will be shown as the choice to the customer, the price will be for the largest box plus any other smaller boxes required by other products. For example:

Product A is assigned to a small box which is $5.80

Product B is assigned to a large box which is $16.85.

The customer will see "Large Flat Rate Box" @ $22.65 ($5.80 + $16.85)

Product configuration

The fields in this configuration area have the same functionality as the ones under "Individual Shipping Boxes". The length, width and height are irrelevant in this section as the flat rate boxes are of a fixed size. The fields will always be greyed out. You can either use a predefined USPS Box, or one you've created under the catalog->manage shipping boxes menu. You will only see boxes which aren't of USPS Box Type custom.

USPS carrier configuration

Configure USPS as you would normally except do NOT select any of the "Flat Rate Box" options as allowed methods. This is because the extension decides when and which box rates to retrieve. The inbuilt Magento USPS will request rates for all of the box rates.